The Judicial Court of Leiria sentenced this Wednesday, November 5th, 24 defendants in a case relating to dozens of frauds through MB Way, which involved crimes of computer fraud, simple and aggravated, and illegitimate access, in singular authorship or co-authorship.
The heaviest sentence was for a 40-year-old woman, sentenced to a single sentence of seven years and three months in prison for a total of 36 crimes.
Another five defendants were sentenced to effective imprisonment, with single sentences varying between one year and seven years in prison. In one case, the sentence of one year in prison was replaced by work in favor of the community.
The rest were sentenced to prison sentences of between nine months and four and a half years, but suspended in execution and subject to probation.
The collective court also sentenced several defendants to pay amounts corresponding to the financial advantage they obtained, in a sum of almost 100 thousand euros, and declared around 20 thousand euros lost in favor of the State.
The panel of judges also upheld several claims for compensation, for material and non-material damage, made by injured parties.
The defendants, 29 in total, 16 men and 13 women, aged between 24 and 72, lived mainly in Alentejo, with family relationships between some. None were present at the reading of the ruling.
At issue in this case were, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) indictment, dozens of crimes of fraud, simple and qualified, computer fraud, computer fraud, including aggravated, and illegitimate access, committed as a single author or co-author.
Following the trial, a change in legal qualification was determined.
According to the order from the Évora Regional Department of Investigation and Criminal Action, the accused, before October 23, 2019, were aware of the “operation of the MBWAY and MBPHONE service and applications [esta foi descontinuada em novembro de 2022]formulated the purpose of, taking advantage of the weaknesses” of these services, to begin to extract economic benefits through the deception of unaware third parties.
It all started with looking at pages on the Internet with advertisements selling items.
Once the advertisement was identified – the overwhelming majority of which were published on OLX -, the next step was to contact the seller, revealing interest in purchasing it and suggesting payment through MB Way.
In the 61 cases (one in attempted form) presented by the MP, almost all of the injured parties did not use those applications, nor did they know how they work.
The defendants and other people that the MP did not identify were ready to help and, at an ATM, the injured parties carried out the operations indicated by the supposed buyers.
The operations involved associating the item seller’s bank card with the alleged buyer’s cell phone, who then gained access to the injured party’s card and bank account through the application.
Then, the “buyer”, using the “send money” option on the application on his cell phone, ordered transfers to another cell phone number that had a bank card associated with his account or that of another defendant.
The MP referred that other people’s accounts, including those of injured parties, were used to move amounts taken from other injured parties.
In addition to transfers, cash withdrawals and cell phone top-ups were made, as well as balance inquiries or account movements of the offended parties.
The calculations made by Lusa indicated that the actual property loss of the injured parties was 166,553.55 euros.